MORE than £1,000 was paid by Middlesbrough Council for the travel costs of an art expert to oversee the installing and taking down of an exhibit at mima.

The “art courier” spent a day and night on Teesside helping to install the Felix Gonzales-Torres show at a cost of £532.

Four months later, the expert returned to oversee the taking down of the exhibit of a string of dozens of light bulbs suspended from the ceiling.

That two-day trip cost £529.80 and the total cost of the two visits of £1,061.80 was among £23,494 worth of spending in the last two years on foreign travel by Middlesbrough Council.

The council strongly defended its spending. It said much of the foreign travel is paid for through grants and other external contributions and only about £5,000 falls on the council taxpayers in the borough.

Figures for Middlesbrough Council show that of the £23,494 spent on overseas trips £7,158 was for art projects.

They included £3,144.82 on a nine-day trip to New York for two officers for “acquisition and collection development”. A further £400 was spent to send an officer on a trip to Dublin “to make relationships with Dublin based galleries”.

A Middlesbrough Council spokesman said: “Art couriers are commonly used when valuable and often fragile works of art are lent by one international institution to another.

“Where a courier is used this will be in response to a specific requirement of the lending institution, without which the loan would not be possible.

“The costs of such travel are always included in the budgeting process during the planning stages of mima’s exhibition schedule, often two to three years in advance.”

The spokesman said foreign travel by officers and members was only ever undertaken where absolutely necessary on behalf of Middlesbrough Council and the town as a whole, and was always authorised in line with council allowances

“Over any given period, the vast majority of the total cost of foreign travel is met by grants and other external contributions.

“Research revealed an annual net cost to Middlesbrough Council Taxpayers of just over £5,000 - for an organisation with a gross annual expenditure in the region of £400m.”

Of the other Teesside authorities Stockton’s overseas trips bill was £2,195, Redcar and Cleveland spent £460, and Hartlepool spent no cash on overseas trips.